21st Century kids and learning

Wesch begins his article "The Old Revolution" acknowledging there is a new movement in education called media literacy and 21st Century Skills and embraces this movement relating it to Dewey's movement from traditional to progressive education. He claims their have always been and will be  traditionalist propaganda "get back to basics", but this time, this movement will be successful. Educators, learners, and Policy makers all recognize the traditional ways of teaching are not aligned with the reality of the lives of our learners and change will happen.

In response to Wesch's article I will say balance, balance, balance. Media literacy and 21st Century Skills are important. I know this not just from experience as a learner, but our evaluation system rubrics include these concepts in best practices. On the other hand, when you are teaching students more than 3 years below grade level there is research to show the most gains are accomplished with direct teaching methods. These two teaching methodology need to find a balance between discovery, curiosity, or critical thinking and explicit instruction, basic skills, or traditional methods. Learners can benefit from both methods and the educator needs to know their students, differentiate input, differentiate methods, and differentiate output based on the individual learners. Equity in education looks different for each learner depending on the supports needed for each learner.